


Pandora

by playingforkeeps



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Help I'm So In Love With This Comic, Jack Knew First, M/M, Past Kent Parson/Jack Zimmermann
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 08:38:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7632946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/playingforkeeps/pseuds/playingforkeeps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When Jack realizes he’s in love with Bittle, his first response is to store it away.</i>
</p>
<p>Jack Zimmermann and compartmentalization.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pandora

When Jack realizes he’s in love with Bittle, his first response is to store it away.

After the overdose, Jack took all his thoughts about boys and put them in a box in the back of his mind, one marked _after hockey_. He knew he couldn’t be bi right now if he wanted a decent career, not with everything else, so boys just became something he was putting away for later. The Q wasn’t something he liked to think about either, so Kenny and Zimms went in another box. His brain turned into a mess of moving boxes and masking tape, and for the time being, it worked.

Besides, not being with guys wasn’t quite as bad as it sounded. It’s not like he’s with many people to begin with. Jack’s never been one for casual sex, more partial to relationships, and Camilla was more than happy to be his Winter Screw date minus the actual screwing. He’d paid her back by setting her up with a girl from Lardo’s sculpture class under the radar. As for Kenny, Jack still isn’t sure what that was—something between love and not-quite-love—but it had still been electric, the only time he really felt anything off the ice, and then it had become just something that hurt to touch, a gash always halfway healed over.

It reopened at Epikegster. Seeing Kenny again had been opening a box Jack had stuffed in the back of his mind and spilling the contents all over the floor. It was anger, shame, fear, but it was also the way Kenny still looked at him out of the corner of his eye like they were in on a private joke. It was the fact that they had barely closed Jack’s door before Kenny’s lips were on his neck and hands rucking up his shirt, trying to talk him past his hangups.

( _Boundaries_ , he can hear Shitty saying, _he was trying to push your boundaries further than you wanted. Don’t make excuses for him._ )

And then Kenny had opened his mouth and become Kent Parson, golden boy of the NHL. He’d dumped out boxes Jack hadn’t touched in ages—the Q, boys, whatever he could call what they’d had together—and mixed the contents up, then left Jack to pick up the mess again. _I’m sure that’ll make your dad proud_ , he’d said, as if he didn’t know how much that would hurt.

_My dad’s happy I made it_ , Jack felt like spitting. _He loves me. Can you say the same?_

He knows he didn’t overdose because of Kenny, not really. Or because he was bi, or even because of his dad. He’d just had no boxes back then, everything in his head all jumbled together, and a few extra pills was an extra layer of dust over them. Kenny just makes a good scapegoat on bad days, and then he gets put back in a box. It’s a solution.

So when Jack is in Annie’s listening to Bittle chatter about their lecture on food culture changing in response to rations during World War II and thinks _I love him_ , it’s not an earth-shattering realization. It’s just something he thinks in passing and accepts as normal: _it’s sunnier than usual, I wonder if the cafeteria has chicken tenders today, I’m in love with Bittle_. It’s as natural as breathing. He realizes later that this has probably been coming for a while now and he just hadn’t realized it.

Mentally, Jack maps the process of it: the fist bump, the checking lessons, sunny afternoons in the Haus kitchen fixing Jack’s chronic lattice problems. He goes through his camera and finds something of Bittle in almost every shot, even just a hand or the back of a head. It’s like the world got a little brighter since they became an actual part of each other’s lives. For a split second, he imagines what could happen once he graduates. Then he shakes his head and remembers who he is, and Bittle gets placed firmly in the _after hockey_ box and Jack moves on with his day.

That night, he’s working on an essay after sitting through an hour of one of Ransom and Holster’s lectures about television shows, this one involving more than one slideshow, and thinks something he hasn’t before.

He doesn’t want to put this in a box.

And that scares the everloving shit out of him.

Jack pushes his computer away and stares at his hands, letting out a slow, measured breath. Across the room, Shitty, who seems to be attuned to shifts in Jack’s mood at this point, glances up. “Brah, you okay?”

For once, Jack isn’t sure how to answer. It’s always been so easy to put what he wants away for later that he sometimes thinks he’s forgotten how to want things now, but he looks at Bittle and thinks, _maybe_. And that in itself is terrifying.

“I’m fine,” he answers. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Shitty raises his eyebrows. “Saying it again doesn’t make it any more true, dude,” he says cryptically, but he doesn’t push it any further.

The next few days are a bit of a struggle between _want to_ and _have to_ when it comes to Bittle. In the past, _have to_ would have won without a doubt. It almost does a few times, but then Bittle will hip-check Jack when they’re walking together or chirp Jack for not knowing who some singer is and he’ll be right back where he started. Being with Bittle, and especially being himself with Bittle, is easy in a way he hasn’t had with anyone in a long time. Bittle doesn’t treat him like some untouchable entity; he looks at him and sees Jack, the guy who carried him when he lost a shoe during Spring C and cries every time they watch _The Iron Giant_. After years of alternating between celebrity worship and rehab, Bittle is completely, utterly, charmingly normal when it comes to Jack. _Want to_ begins to take the lead.

The first time he kisses Bittle, they’re sitting through movie night on the disgusting green couch (Bittle insisted on putting a towel down before touching it) and it’s just dark enough that Jack can get away with sneaking glances at him without being too obvious. Halfway through _27 Dresses_ , Bittle becomes a heavy weight against his side, cheek pressed against Jack’s shoulder. He turns to wake him but gets distracted by the shadow of Bittle’s eyelashes brushing the freckles on his cheekbone. Before he can stop himself, Jack presses his lips quickly against the top of Bittle’s head and gives himself half a second to breathe in the scent of his shampoo. Yeah, _want_ to is definitely going to win this.

When he turns back to the screen, Shitty gives him a knowing look from across the room. Jack frowns a little, a question, and Shitty nods almost imperceptibly. _It’s okay._

Time passes. The end of the year is a blur after the season ends, especially since Jack is doing his best to keep all his worries about post-graduation in a box. He goes through the motions of being professional when it matters, but in between, he buys an oven, goes to a party, gets hazed. Really just college student things, but they’re the things he’ll remember. And before he knows it, he’s at graduation with Bittle holding his tie and making some falsely cheery comment about seeing him on TV, which feels like a more permanent goodbye than Jack wants. He’s not sure how to express exactly what he wants to say, but this isn’t it. His mind gets out the tape and boxes and starts to put his feelings away.

Then his dad says “Go really say goodbye”, and Jack knows what he means. He runs.

At the door of the Haus, though, he pauses in a moment of panic—what if he was wrong, and this isn’t what Bittle wants? He turns to leave and nearly does, scuffing one shoe against the porch. But then it becomes overwhelmingly clear that he can’t stuff this away and pretend to be alright. He has to know, even if it doesn’t go the way he wants it to. Even if he’s wrong about Bittle.

As luck would have it, he isn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> this was in my drive as "you're in love you beautiful idiot". got the idea for it while hunting pokemon. dedicated to kim, who yelled at me until I finished writing. title is a reference to greek mythology.
> 
> find me on [tumblr](http://playing-for-keeps.tumblr.com/).


End file.
